How to prevent PHP variables from being arrays or objects?

Question

I think that (the title) is the problem I am having. I set up a MySQL connection, I read an XML file, and then I insert those values into a table by looping through the elements. The problem is, instead of inserting only 1 record, sometimes I insert 2 or 3 or 4. It seems to depend on the previous values I have read. I think I am reinitializing the variables, but I guess I am missing something -- hopefully something simple.

Here is my code. I originally had about 20 columns, but I shortened the included version to make it easier to read.

$ctr = 0;
$sql =  "insert into csd (id,type,nickname,hostname,username,password) ".
        "values (?,?,?,?,?,?)";
$cur = $db->prepare($sql);

for ($ctr = 0; $ctr < $expected_count; $ctr++) {
    unset($bind_vars,$dat);

    $lbl = "csd_{$ctr}";

    $dat['type']      = (string) $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->type;
    $dat['nickname']  = (string) $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->nickname;
    $dat['hostname']  = (string) $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->hostname;
    $dat['username']  = (string) $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->username;
    $dat['password']  = (string) $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->password;

    $bind_vars = array( $id,$dat['$type'], $dat['$nickname'], $dat['$hostname'], 
                        $dat['$username'], $dat['$password']);
    print_r ($bind_vars);
    $res = $db->execute($cur, $bind_vars);
}

P.S. I also tagged this SimpleXML because that is how I am reading the file, though that code is not included above. It looks like this:

$ref = simplexml_load_file($file);

UPDATE: I've changed the code around as per suggestions, and now it is not always the same pattern, but it is equally broken. When I display the bind array before inserting, it looks like this. Note that I also count the rows before and after, so there are 0 rows, then I insert 1, then there are 2:

0 CSDs on that ITEM now.
Array
(
    [0] => 2
    [1] => 0
    [2] =>
    [3] => X
    [4] => XYZ
    [5] =>
    [6] =>
    [7] =>
    [8] => audio
    [9] =>
    [10] => 192.168.0.50
    [11] => 192.168.0.3
    [12] => 255.255.255.0
    [13] => 255.255.255.0
    [14] =>
    [15] =>
    [16] =>
    [17] => 21
    [18] => 5
    [19] => Y
    [20] => /dir
)
2 CSDs on that ITEM now.

Answer 1

not sure the exact answer but this maybe help

$ctr = 0;
$sql =  "insert into csd (id,type,nickname,hostname,username,password) ".
        "values (?,?,?,?,?,?)";
$cur = $db->prepare($sql);

for ($ctr = 0; $ctr < $expected_count; $ctr++) {

    //list (  $lbl, $type, $nickname, $hostname, $username, $password) = "";
    //$bind_vars = array();
    // use unset
    unset($bind_vars,$dat);

    $lbl = "csd_{$ctr}";

    $dat['type']      = $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->type;
    $dat['nickname']  = $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->nickname;
    $dat['hostname']  = $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->hostname;
    $dat['username']  = $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->username;
    $dat['password']  = $ref->itm->csds->$lbl->password;

    $bind_vars = array($id,$dat['$type'],$dat['$nickname'],$dat['$hostname'],$dat['$username'],$dat['$password']);
    $res = $db->execute($cur, $bind_vars);

    # this is a separate function which works, but which only 
    # does SELECTS and cannot be the problem.  I include it because I 
    # want to count the total rows.

    printf ("%d CSDs on that ITEM now.\n",  CountCSDs($id_to_sync));
}

or maybe you should check/echo $expected_count value first to determine correct count

Answer 2

Turns out that the script was being run by a cron job, but SOMEONE ELSE was running my script with another cron job, and therefore it was sometimes creating twice as many records, and sometimes it was not. And the more I looked at it, and the more I created code to troubleshoot it, the slower it got, so the worse it got.

In other words, when I didn't look at it, it worked better than when I did look at it.

Darn all those people trying to help me!